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74
FO-SHO-HING-TSAN-KING.
11,7.
Others who practise water-dwelling like fish; thus there are (he said) Brahmakârins of every sort, who practise austerities, that they may at the end of life obtain a birth in heaven, 515
And by their present sufferings afterwards obtain peaceable fruit. The lord of men ?, the excellent master, hearing all their modes of sorrow-producing penance, 516
Not perceiving any element of truth in them, experienced no joyful emotion in his heart; lost in thought, he regarded the men with pity, and with his heart in agreement his mouth thus spake: 517
Pitiful indeed are such sufferings! and merely in quest of a human or heavenly reward 3, ever revolving in the cycle of birth or death, how great your sufferings, how small the recompence! 518
'Leaving your friends, giving up honourable position; with a firm purpose to obtain the joys of heaven, although you may escape little sorrows, yet in the end involved in great sorrow; 519
Promoting the destruction of your outward form, and undergoing every kind of painful penance, and yet seeking to obtain another birth; increasing and prolonging the causes of the five desires, 520
'Not considering that herefrom (result repeated) birth and death, undergoing suffering and, by that, seeking further suffering; thus it is that the world of men, though dreading the approach of death, 521
1 That is, as I understand it, Rishis who live in water like fish. In the former case the 'air-inhaling snake Rishi' would be Rishis who endeavour to live on air like the boa
3. The lord of two-footed creatures,' i.e. of men.
• Gin-tien po; if it had been tien-gin po, it would have simply meant 'a heavenly reward.'
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